Korea was where i discovered my true self (Korea diaries)

Each time I embark on a solo journey, it holds significance in my life.

2019: Van life, and Canada specifically, was where I discovered God.

2021: SUV life, was where I discovered how I kept attracting the same type of narcissistic, abusive man, and where I realized that I needed to heal and to face my trauma that I had suppressed for years.

2022: The three-week road trip I took to the PNW was where I finally became ready to heal from a particularly toxic/abusive relationship and where I spoke to my ex for the first time in nearly five years.

2024: Korea was where I discovered myself. My true self.

Where I embarked on a journey with shadow work and started the process of not healing myself or fixing myself, but radically accepting myself and becoming whole, complete.

In a previous post, I talked about how God brought me to Korea to rest, and get my joy back.

Another assignment he gave me during this trip was this: radical self-acceptance. Shadow work was the gateway to that level of self-love that I hadn’t experienced before.

What is Shadow Work?

Shadow work is the process of exploring and integrating the unconscious aspects of ourselves—those traits, emotions, and memories that we suppress or reject.

Coined by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, the “shadow” represents the parts of ourselves that we have disowned due to societal conditioning, fear, or past trauma.

While we may think of these aspects as negative, they are not inherently bad; they are simply unacknowledged.

At the core of shadow work lies the belief that these parts of us have been fractured, and shadow work is the act of bringing all the parts back together, so we are whole again.

Read that again. It was shifting my perspective from thinking certain parts of myself were bad, to simply that they were unacknowledged that healed some wounds that I realized were caused by Christian culture/the church.

You see, even before I really embarked on shadow work, I started to realize how much the church and people representing Jesus have misled me to believe certain things about myself.

When I was going through the extremely hard time of healing my trauma, I kept trying to tune in online to my church (its based in another state), but I found myself getting more and more angry as they’d say fluffy things like, “thank God for your situation, thank God for the trials, just trust God to get you out of it.”

Not only was it unhelpful, it was also harmful. It was that sort of message which had good intent but ultimately was invalidating my situation and how I was feeling.

As I started shadow work, I started dismantling some of the beliefs conditioned by the western Christian church culture.

So often in church culture, the belief that humans are “bad,” is beat into us, so that any part of us that isn’t “pleasing to God” should automatically be judged, shamed, and condemned.

I’d been trying to “die to myself,” and “cut off any parts of my soul that weren’t pleasing to God,” throughout my healing journey for years, but my time in Korea had shown me that those parts weren’t gone like I had originally thought, they were just suppressed.

There were many situations in which these shadows, these parts of myself that I didn’t like or had deemed bad, came roaring back to the surface, so much so that sometimes I wondered if I had done any healing work in the past several years at all.

Shadow work gave me a new perspective. It taught me that I didn’t have to “heal” or “fix” myself. Instead, I was to let these parts of me breathe, speak, and I was to listen.

When I decided to love myself, and get to know these parts of myself better, and truly understand them, that’s when real change started happening within me.

Why is Shadow Work Important?

Ignoring our shadow self doesn’t make it disappear—it manifests in our thoughts, behaviors, relationships, and overall well-being. When we engage in shadow work, we:

• Break free from limiting patterns – Recognizing and addressing deep-seated beliefs and wounds allows us to live more consciously.
• Improve relationships – Understanding our triggers helps us react with awareness rather than impulsivity.
• Cultivate self-acceptance – Embracing our full self fosters inner peace and confidence.
• Deepen our spiritual and emotional growth – True transformation occurs when we integrate all parts of who we are.

How to Practice Shadow Work

1. Self-Reflection & Journaling – Writing about your emotional triggers, fears, and patterns can reveal unconscious wounds.
2. Observe Your Reactions – Pay attention to strong emotional responses in daily life. What do they reveal about past wounds?
3. Inner Child Work – Connect with the younger version of yourself who may have been hurt, rejected, or neglected.
4. Mindfulness & Meditation – Practicing presence allows you to observe emotions without judgment.
5. Therapy & Guidance – Working with a coach or therapist can provide deeper insights and healing.

Essentially, shadow work’s foundation is in journaling. I watched a couple of YouTube videos, and this one in particular was helpful with organizing my thoughts and naming my shadows, so I had more of plan going into it.

With each journaling session, I started by asking myself specific questions (laid out in the video), and then for each answer, I kept asking myself, “why?”, spiraling further and further within myself until I got to the root cause.

This practice wasn’t actually that new or groundbreaking – I’ve done a lot of this in talk therapy and in conversation with God in the past – but the reason I think I got so much deeper was because of how I approached this process.

Embracing the Shadow

Shadow work is not about eradicating the parts of ourselves we dislike—it’s about bringing them into the light of awareness so that they no longer control us. When we face our shadow with courage and compassion, we open the door to greater freedom, authenticity, and self-love.

I approached shadow work not as a way to work “through” these issues or overcome them, but with the intention of working with myself.

I wasn’t getting over, or working through, or healing, or fixing myself. I didn’t allow that narrative to permeate this experience.

I sat down with myself with the intention of not changing anything, but simply to understand why I was the way I was.

And I deliberately chose, to love myself and accept myself, even if I didn’t like certain parts of myself.

Discovering My True Self

As I continued to work with myself, spending time journaling, and holding space for each shadow, I discovered something.

Time and time again throughout my healing journey, I’ve felt like I’ve let go of certain traits or habits, only for them to surface again, and I never understood why.

It was because I was trying to force them out, hating on them, and judging them, and in turn, these parts of myself clung on tighter, resisting the process.

I could shove them down deep within me, forgetting them for a while, but they’d always come back to the surface.

It was like the last piece to a puzzle, and suddenly the entire image became totally clear.

My shadows were resisting healing because they were afraid of ceasing to exist. These parts of me were fearful of who I’d become if I didn’t have all of me.

And when I approached each shadow like I was talking to a young child, with love, patience, compassion, and radical self-acceptance, I was able to experience actual change and actual healing within.

I worked with myself, instead of against myself.

Another thing I discovered with shadow work was that underneath the shadows, lie strengths.

Again, the video goes into more detail about this, but essentially, each shadow is covering up a strong character trait, because the shadow itself is a protection method we most likely used as young children to get a need met.

It was a wild experience, to uncover pieces of myself that I’d never really noticed before.

For example, since I was young, I’ve had dreams of “being special.” Now, as a kid, this looked more like being a famous actress or something, but as I grew older, I had this sense that I was meant to make an impact.

This feeling was constantly overshadowed by my shadows of people-pleasing, social anxiety, and worrying about what others think of me.

These shadows told me that there was no way I could make an impact because no one really likes me that much, and I was way too afraid to try anyway.

By working with my shadows, I discovered the root causes of these beliefs, and under it all, I found strengths lying like golden treasure.

Underneath it all, I actually possessed qualities that would enable me to make an impact, like being a leader, and being a good communicator.

And once I integrated the shadow, I was able to step into those new traits fully.

Integrating the Shadow

Once the shadows are brought up through journaling, and the root cause for these behaviors is discovered, the next step is to integrate the shadow.

This is why shadow work was so pivotal in my healing journey, because I wasn’t fixing or changing anything at all, like I had in other forms of personal development work.

Integration doesn’t mean getting rid of these parts, it means accepting them and learning how to work with them, so that you become complete, like I mentioned above.

It’s learning to accept the parts we hate, because without them, we wouldn’t be ourselves.

So what does integration look like? It will look different for each shadow, but usually consists of rewiring thought patterns and physical acts/situations where you can allow the shadow to come out.

For example, when my dad asked me to speak at my grandma’s funeral, my immediate reaction was absolutely not!

My shadow of getting embarrassed easily jumped to the surface, but I knew that if I said yes, it would be an opportunity for integration.

It was a chance to step into the strength of the shadow, which is actually my skill of public speaking.

I’ve always known deep down that I’m good at presentations and public speaking, but I’ve shied away from it, thinking that it was just a wish, due to trauma from getting made fun of as a kid during presentations in class.

I already hated having attention on me, and I’d get super embarrassed and red in the face, which then kids would make fun of and make me feel even worse about myself.

This core wound stuck with me throughout my life to where there have been countless social settings where I’ve blushed or become super awkward whenever there’s multiple people looking at me.

Instead of suppressing both the strength and the shadow, I leaned into this experience, knowing that my shadow very well may come up, but I decided to approach it with a different mindset.

Instead of being fearful of what could happen, I decided I was going to do amazing at this, and if I got embarrassed anyway, I was going to love myself through it. I wasn’t going to get mad at myself.

And ya know what happened? I did a really good job. It wasn’t perfect, and I was shaking like a leaf, but I didn’t die from embarrassment like I feared. I didn’t flush at all.

I got several compliments after, people telling me how kind it was for me to speak, and how they couldn’t have done it themselves.

How shadow work drew me closer to God

Ya wanna know what the secret sauce was to this success? It was God.

Throughout each process of integration, I’ve included God. I’ve taken each shadow and have introduced them to the Lord, and this is where the true change has started to happen.

Instead of hating on myself and trying to change every part of me on my own, which has been met with resistance, I’ve surrender each part to God.

And with each integration, God has walked with me through it, allowing my shadows to rise to the surface, but instead of condemning them or changing them, God has met them with love.

It’s through this loving lens that I’ve been able to differentiate what is actually a part of me (and can’t change), and what isn’t. Shadows that I thought were character traits have sometimes been unhealthy habits I’ve picked up somewhere in life, or even other people’s projections that aren’t my own at all.

These are things that I’ve been able to strip off, like clothing, and set down at the feet of Jesus, only to find my true self shining underneath.

I was afraid that doing this work would change me, and it has, but not in the ways other forms of healing have changed me in the past.

This changing is a strange oxymoron of changing certain parts of me that weren’t really a part of me but I thought they were a part of me for so long, only to discover that once I let go of those things, I was still the same, because I discovered my true self who I’ve been all along.

Does that make sense? Shadow work has been the path for total soul alignment, for becoming the best version of myself, which is also the truest version of myself.

Shadow work brought me closer to God in a way I haven’t felt in years. And it was because of his love that I was able to do the hard work of letting go of some of these traits and habits.

God’s unconditional love taught me that even if I don’t strip away the unhealthy parts, the parts that are holding me back, he’ll never leave me.

And I thought that if God loves me in this way, then I can surely love myself in the same way.

And as I approached each shadow with unconditional love, with radical self-acceptance, some of those shadows melted away in relief, some I intentionally took off and set down, and some still remain, which I continue to work with, not to change them but to discover what strength is lying underneath.

The strengths and the shadows can coexist. It all goes back to loving, radical self-acceptance.

If you’ve never tried shadow work, I encourage you to try it. You might be surprised at what strengths are hiding under the shadows, waiting to be discovered.

Have you tried shadow work before? Let me know in the comments.